He’s ready to talk sports

South teacher, coach wins WFAN contest

Posted
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 12:03 pm

Valley Stream South High School teacher and coach Demetri Adrahtas, who lives in Long Beach, won WFAN’s Fantasy Phenom Challenge last week and will host a year-long show on the sports talk radio station beginning this fall.

Brian Croce

By Brian Croce

Demetri Adrahtas’s passionate, free-flowing voice has been heard in the classrooms and on the fields of Valley Stream South High School for years. But the teacher and coach will be talking to a much larger audience when he hits the airwaves of WFAN sports radio this fall.

On Aug. 26, Adrahtas, of Long Beach, was declared the winner of WFAN’s Fantasy Phenom Challenge, and will host a weekly two-hour show on the station for one year.

Adrahtas, 37, and five other finalists — three individuals and a duo — competed live on Aug. 23 during WFAN host Mike Francesa’s end-of-summer bash at Bar A in Lake Como, N.J. The event was broadcast on the station, at 660 AM and 101.9 FM, as well as on the YES television network. Each finalist read a message from a station advertiser, took a phone call from a listener and delivered a monologue.

“I wasn’t nervous,” Adrahtas said. “I didn’t want to allow myself to be nervous. I was this close to accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish, so I wasn’t going to let myself be nervous. In sports terms, I was just thinking, ‘Finish.’”

He and his wife, Kristin, drove down to Lake Como the morning of the event, which was when he cleared his mind and prepared, he said. With family and friends on hand, hundreds of people in attendance and a national radio and television audience, Adrahtas took to the air at about 3:20 p.m.

“I didn’t want to let the situation get the better of me,” he said. “You just go up there and talk sports; you do what you love.”

There were three rounds of the contest, which began in late July. The key part of the audition was the monologue. Adrahtas addressed the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, and Yankees Manager Joe Girardi sticking up for his high-profile third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, during a game on Aug. 18.

Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.